CVE-2026-97942

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's x86 instruction patching subsystem. A race condition between runtime instruction modification (text poking) and page attribute updates can cause virtual memory lookup failures in shared executable memory. A local user can trigger this issue during kernel module loading or system patching routines, leading to a kernel crash and a Denial of Service (DoS).

A moderate-impact race condition flaw was found in the Linux kernel's x86 instruction patching (text poking) subsystem, affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS. When CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_EXECMEM_ROX is enabled, multiple modules share a single execmem vmalloc range and can call set_memory_*() page attribute updates (change_page_attr) in parallel with __text_poke(). If these operations race, page table collapsing or PMD hugepage splitting can make vmalloc_to_page() fail, hitting a BUG_ON() in __text_poke() and panicking the kernel. A local user able to trigger kernel module loading or other static call update paths can therefore crash the system, resulting in a denial of service; there is no impact to confidentiality or integrity. The vulnerable code, which depends on EXECMEM_ROX support that was re-enabled starting with RHEL 10.1 and in the RHIVOS kernels, is not present in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, and 9 (including kernel-rt), RHEL 10.0, or the OpenShift Container Platform RHCOS 8/9 containers, so those products are not affected. The RHEL 6 ELS stream is out of support scope. For the affected RHEL 10 and RHIVOS streams the fix is currently deferred; the residual risk is limited to a local denial of service that requires winning a narrow timing race during module loading or kernel patching operations. Red Hat rates this flaw Moderate severity (CVSS 3.1: 5.5, AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.